Superfluous J

...which means that you'd have saved time by just placing all 4 engines singly.

Yeah that's not something you do.

Manned landing and return from every planet. That was pre 1.0. In 1.0.x I've done a lot but not everywhere. The only thing I consider undone at this point is a sea level landing and return on Eve. My previous landing was on a mountain.

Did you bring them home? I am pretty sure the tourist contracts won't complete until everybody's back on Kerbin, perhaps even recovered.

No, it implies they know the game habits of most players. When you start the game for the first time it asks if it can call home. You can see the result of your answer in the settings.cfg file. It is possible that >50% of players said "yes" to the prompt, and so therefore Squad knows, out of those people, how many use mods, which could also be > 50%. They could infer that, if >50% of users they know about don't use mods, that >50% of ALL uses don't use mods. Or, it's possible that the number of polled users who don't use mods is actually >50% of the total sales they've ever had.

I think it always returns whatever is worth the most science TO START WITH, regardless of whether or not you've gotten any. I know with my Jool 5 mission - in which the mothership went in orbit around Tylo and everybody left from there to go everywhere else - a lot of the ships had "a vessel returned from orbit of Tylo" instead of what they did.

Then it would open up into your craft.

That is at least as awesome as when we hear about a 13 year old playing the game. Truly a testament to how broad an audience this game appeals.

12/12 and I'll admit I didn't actually know the answer to one of them. I was able to eliminate the other 3 answers so just picked what was left. I will gladly take my 4 monkeys parcel post to the included address. Bonobos, if possible.

I'm totally cool with "Programming the robots" being something left to mods, though it'd be nice to be able to drop an "instruction node" onto an orbit and do things like "Do all science" or "Pull the chutes" or "Align retrograde," as well as "do this maneuver node."

I agree with both of you (and GoSlash, I think DocMoriarty agrees with you). Nose-mounted parachutes DO increase drag. However, they SHOULDN'T.

He didn't say he was using it on a small probe. Perhaps he was using it on something that required a bit more torque than the other probe cores had.

I put the Kerbal on the ladder. Then I hit "]" to switch to the ship. Then I throttled up and took off. Then the Kerbal slipped off the ladder and fell to his death. It wasn't my best day. But I DID control the ship with him on the ladder. For a little while

One of the things I both love and hate about this game is how you can learn something so basic after years of playing. I've actually benefited from this before, but figured it was just that my reaction wheels were better able to compensate.

I may have just had one of your babies.

No, I don't. But I can understand it.

Yes. One they seem to be working on. Well, probably. If it had radiators attached to it and it was right after the dock, I've had the hot engines heat up radiators quickly, and then those radiators heated up the thing they were attached to. But that's a long shot. More likely a heat bug.

One problem is I never bother to do this. So, let me take a different tack... Why do you want this? If your orbit is obviously not equatorial, it's obvious. If it's too close to tell the difference, why does it matter if it's not perfect? One way you could do this with KER would be to have your latitude readout on the screen as you're orbiting. As soon as you pass 0 degrees, drop a maneuver node. Next orbit, when you reach that maneuver node, you'll know you're at the AN or DN and you can burn. It'll take several orbits to get closer and closer but it shouldn't be that bad, and you can leave that maneuver node there as a marker (though the AN/DN may move if you burn too far away from it). Another idea is to install HyperEdit. Put a one-part ship on the launchpad, HyperEdit into an equatorial orbit around the planet in question, align your ship to that part so you know it's perfect, and then terminate the part. Or cut out the middle man and HyperEdit to just change your ship's tilt to 0.

1) Either all of Kerbin will be able to talk to the probe, or you'll gain that ability when you level up something (Probably the tracking station). We have not heard definitively on this, or if we have I missed it. 2) I don't understand this question. There has been no word of any science data automatically moving from anywhere to anywhere else. 3) We have not heard. If I had to guess they'll clip. All we have seen so far is parts that clip, or parts that do not clip but still fully animate. IMO the better of the two is clipping, considering the alternative is the comical but disastrous possibility that your cargo bay door will send your ship flipping into space.

They have to. How else can you see the Klingons 10 light years away in real time while traveling at warp?

Actually, not bugging modders about bugs in your 64 bit KSP install is the opposite of a sin.

There is a mod. Kerbal Engineer will tell you your current orbit, and I believe PreciseNode can tell you the inclination of the resultant orbit from a maneuver node. I wouldn't be surprised if Kerbal Engineer had that as well. I also wouldn't be surprised if MechJeb had a "Make my oribit equatorial" button If you don't want to use mods, you could accept a "satellite in equatorial orbit around ..." contract and then set your AN and DN relative to that to 0. But then you'd have to either complete or cancel the contract

Staging mode is the mode you use. Docking mode is the mode you don't use. Ever. For anything. Actually some people use it for rovers. I'm actually being serious, but if you must know, it screws up your keys so the spacebar - instead of staging - toggles WASDQE between translate (what the IJKLHN keys do) and rotate (what the WASDQE keys do normally). Why someone would want to risk staging just to confuse their brains about what the keys do is beyond me. Good Note, your station is not lost. Once you've mastered docking (or at least are comfortable with it), you can build a tug in the VAB that is designed to attach to your large ship and balance its RCS jets Or at least have a TON of reaction wheels so unbalanced jets aren't as big a deal. Then - with your more balanced ship and better feel for docking, you should be able to get them connected. And don't feel bad about not getting it. My first docking attempt caused both of my orange tanks (yes, each ship had one) to collide in a cross formation at about 50m/s. Needless to say I didn't actually get the docking done on that attempt.

Pointing is very much in the cards, but for future reference that video shows how to align using just the one craft, and how to do it with very little RCS. Granted that ship is much smaller than yours, though as someone who has never docked before I would not recommend your first docking be with those ships you have there. There's a reason NASA had an entire program (Gemini) to learn how to dock 2 ships together and nothing else.

I made a tutorial video just for this exact thing. You could find worse ways to spend 10 minutes.